Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Middle game

Good day folks! Long time but I come back with valid questions to you. I have more questions, but I will reserve some of t hem for future posts. :D

# 1: It is often said that the average chess player is rated ~ 1500 (FIDE?). This is USCF distribution curve. So, basically most of the players are rated in the ~ 1500 range. When most of the players are rated in this range, why are the available resources customized for "Master" level players? When we look at the chess books store, 90% of the chess books are greek and latin to these average players. For example, "Fighting the Ruy Lopez". What benefit do these average players get from reading a complete book on the Ruy Lopez? Little to none.

My question is why do the so called chess authors not focus on the average players? It not only makes sense for the players but it makes sense to the publishers as well, since the sale volume will be higher.

Agree?

#2: Please see the image below:

Black to move, the next move is obvious. In my honest opinion, (for average players), most of the time, the game is lost anywhere between 7th move to 15th move. I can coin the term "early middle game" here.Not exactly, but you get the point. Many average players memorize few opening moves and falter when the opening is done. They will have chance to recover if the opponent also makes mistakes but more often than not, the game is lost.

When we look for chess puzzles to upcoming players, why don't we find many puzzles that come immediately after the opening? I did a good search before posting this here. It also comes from my experience of looking at various resources as I teach young kids. Why aren't the chess resources (chess.com/ chesstempo/ chess puzzle books etc) focussed on Early middle game puzzles? The best out of a player comes only out of practice. But, the practice should also be optimized to bring the best out of the player.

3 comments:

The initial USCRF rating is set to 1500 and so the average rating suppose to be 1500 too.Serious! Player study a lot, pay a lot for chessbooks and have a "high" rating ( compared to average )So chessbooks are written for advanced players because they are likely to buy them.

And somehow i have the impression that strong player dont like us to get too good.

The puzzles of chesstempo are extracted from blunders in master games. Masters dont blunder in the early stage of the games because they do lots of opening study. The idea behind this method of generating puzzles is, that you should get used to good positions and good blunders. if you want to do tactics based on the blunders of weaker players then use lichess

Aoxo, Thank you. I will look at lichess. Even in chesstempo, there are plenty of tactics are rated ~ 1,500. There is no doubt. It is the only that those tactics are far out in the game. A 1,500 rated does go that far, that is a yes. But, most often, the player makes a mistake earlier than that.

The tactics puzzles of chesstempo are generated form the blunders found in game-databases. Maot of these games are games of masters. Such blunders can be extremly easy see for example here : http://chesstempo.com/chess-problems/2480 a grandmaster made a blunder rated 273 In games of masters blunders are less common in the opening so you will find not that many openingblunders at ct.

Lichess is using their own game-database to generate the tactical puzzles, most players at lichess are not that strong , so you may hope for more puzzles from the beginning of the game